


The Final Act

by AmunetMana



Series: The Arrangement [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Asexual Elias Bouchard, Asexual Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Canon Asexual Character, Canon Compliant, Crossdressing, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, Missing Scene, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 19:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30026550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmunetMana/pseuds/AmunetMana
Summary: The real world and all its horrors hurry Jon and Elias along, whether they’re ready for it or not. One way or another, however different they may wish it could be, time is running short.A night before the Unknowing, and what follows after.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: The Arrangement [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2119173
Comments: 19
Kudos: 20





	The Final Act

**Author's Note:**

> As you may or may not have gleaned from my other works, I really love to make things as canon compliant as possible. Makes them hurt just that bit more.

It is the night before Jon and the others are set to head off to Great Yarmouth and, having just plotted the downfall of Elias with the others in the tunnels, Jon is being let quietly into the man’s beautiful flat. Elias smiles as he gestures Jon through first, closing the door behind them and taking Jon’s coat like a gentleman. Jon shucks off his shoes without being asked – everything is gleaming and neat, and he knows what’s coming well enough to know that his shoes will be coming off sooner rather than later in any case.

When his shoes are off and his coat presumable tucked away somewhere neat, Elias tugs Jon close to kiss him, hands warm and reassuring where they cup Jon’s cheeks.

He can’t read Jon’s thoughts anymore. Not all of them. Jon doesn’t know if Elias has realised that yet but he can’t, and it’s vital he _doesn’t_ for at least the next twenty-four hours or so. After that, no matter which way things go it won’t matter.

His arms have found their way around Elias’ neck whilst they were kissing, and Elias smiles at him, suffused with warmth as he shifts to hold Jon close in his arms.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Jon,” he says, and Jon smiles, a little wearily.

“Hopefully not for the first and last time,” he says with a dryness he doesn’t entirely feel. “It would be a shame to finally see the inside of your home only for it to be consumed by the unravelling of reality.”

“I have every faith in you, Jon,” Elias says firmly, and tugs Jon to follow him through into the main part of the flat. It is wide and spacious, and Elias and Jon keep their fingers linked together as they wander through, Jon twisting and turning every way, trying to take everything in. Elias follows his gaze keenly and, in a brief moment where Jon finds himself watching Elias instead of the room, it seems as though he is re-realising all the components of his home as Jon experiences them for the first time. Assessing them, evaluating them based on Jon’s own opinions.

“Your home is beautiful,” Jon tells him, looking straight into Elias’ eyes. Elias smiles, demure.

“I make a point of filling it with beautiful things,” he says, raising Jon’s knuckles to kiss whilst Jon scoffs and darkens, now thoroughly unable to look Elias anywhere even near the eye. “Why don’t you go explore,” Elias suggests with an unrepentant smile, “you can leave your things in the bedroom, and there’s a shower if you want to wash up before we eat.”

_Dinner at the end of the world_ , Jon thinks, deciding it would be a bit repetitive to voice the thought out loud once again. Elias touches his cheek.

“I hope one day you will stop believing you are doomed to lose every good thing you’ve gained in your life,” Elias tells him, before pushing him gently in the direction of a corridor. “Go on. It’s the first door on the right, and the en suite’s through another door inside.” Jon squeezes his fingers gently before going.

He does indeed explore before going in, stopping only to drop his bag in the doorway before moving on. He had to bring his things for tomorrow’s trip with him – no time to go back to his own flat first tomorrow morning. Not if he wants his first ever visit to Elias’ home to be worth it. It is a generously sized place – Head of the Institute is a good job to have, it seems, and there is family money too, Jon thinks. Through the doors he finds a study, stuffed full of bookcases brimming with tomes Jon itches to get his hands on, a spare bedroom in another, and a lavish bathroom in the final. Jon hovers there, and wonders if he should use the large bathtub instead of the en suite’s shower. It would certainly be an excessive experience – Jon’s not exactly one for languishing in masses of bubbles and warm, soapy water, wine to the side in a large glass and some terrible novel abandoned beside it, but he could have a go at it all the same.

_No. That’s not me._ Jon shakes his head and abandons the opulent bathroom to return to that first room – to the master bedroom. To _Elias_ ’ bedroom. (To _their_ bedroom, Jon hears in Elias’ voice, but that’s ridiculous. Elias can’t place words into his mind like that.)

The room is simple. A double bed, high quality and invitingly plush, with all the expected pillows and throws. A door Jon presumes leads to the aforementioned en suite, a bedside table, a vanity, and a wardrobe. There is, Jon thinks with an inordinately pleased quirk of his lips, another bookcase, once more packed top to bottom with books. He crosses the room to it carefully, running his finger down one of the hefty, gilded spines. He can’t help the brief, heart thumping scan his eyes make over the shelves however, looking for that grey-white spine of a web masquerading as a book.

Nothing. Jon’s safe here. He huffs out a laugh at the thought, pulling his hand away to press the back against his mouth, throat and eyes stinging at the thought. _He’s safe here_. God help him.

Jon steps back, scanning his eyes further, catching on the tall doors that face the bed. The wardrobe. He meanders his way over to it slowly, running his fingers over the doorhandle, breathing deeply. Jon opens the wardrobe carefully – and can’t help but smile at what’s inside. He was right, as it turns out. Each article of clothing Elias has ever acquired for him, lies inside waiting for him, neatly pressed and hung up with care. They’re in the order Elias brought them to him, something Jon doesn’t need supernatural powers to know, not when he’s catalogued each of their meetings so carefully in his mind. There are not as many as he would have thought – their relationship has swelled from between the cracks in their respective lives to fill and encompass them so completely, it feels like it has been going on for far longer that the few months it had had in reality. Like a lifetime.

There are also dresses and skirts inside that Jon hasn’t seen before, but he skims past them to find what he’s looking for, letting out a sigh when his eyes fall on the simple slip of fabric from their very first meeting. Jon strokes his hand down the soft black fabric, he fiddles with the bow. It makes him smile, and it makes him sad. Eventually he pushes back the soft fabric and softer memories, returning to the newer items. There aren’t many, but there are enough to sketch out Elias’ intentions for the future. The future where they win, and the world isn’t consumed by the Unknowing.

It’s difficult to pull away, to close the door again and finally head to the en suite. There’ll be time to look again later, when he picks something to wear. It’ll be his first time choosing for himself, he muses as he soaks under the spray, scrubbing down with soap that smells like Elias, combing out his long hair. He wonders if anyone at the archives has taken any real notice of Jon letting it grow so much. A lack of comments didn’t mean no one was looking, it just meant they still hated him, or felt awkward, or wanted to disconnect as completely as they could – anything to protect themselves.

When Jon emerges, he is physically refreshed but his thoughts still stymied and dismal.

He returns to the wardrobe, pulling it back open again. He pulls both doors as wide as they will go, not the timid peek of before. Elias’ clothes hang next to the dresses, just as Jon once fantasised. A whole life waiting. Jon presses his fingers against the soft fabrics, closing his eyes. Imagines going to sleep in the bed behind him, pressed together with Elias in the middle. Books on the bedside tables, a dozen bookmarks in them as he combs through for too many facts to hold at once in his mind. Opening the wardrobe every day and donning the persona of someone happy. Someone beautiful.

The notion of doing it all the time, of shedding the person he is now and becoming someone almost entirely new is daunting. Too daunting, for the moment, and Jon lets out a shaky breath, looking at all of the choices. All of Elias’ choices. It’s up to Jon what he wears now, but it’s still a pick from the person Elias is guiding him towards.

_Maybe you’ll never be ready._

Jon glances over to his own bag, sagging sadly by the door. It is not all he owns, far from it, but it seems to be a sad sum of his life anyway, faced with everything else around him. Jon ponders a moment more, looking at all of the beautiful creations waiting for him, before going to retrieve his things.

~

“It’s like in New York,” Jon comments when he finally comes out into the kitchen, choices made, anxiously awaiting comment even as he affects nonchalance. “When we had dinner together.” _When we argued and things changed but we worked it out – like people in relationships are supposed to do._

“A little,” Elias agrees, turning to smile at Jon from where he’s stood in front of a cooker. “Except this time, I’m cooking for you myself.” Then, he takes Jon in properly, and the smile falters. There is an immediate pang of fear in Jon as the expression drops, but tentative hope blooms in his pounding heart in its place as Elias’ expression morphs not to displeasure or disappointment, but to a special kind of softness Jon isn’t entirely sure he’s seen before. Jon’s bare feet shift over the cool floor, a nervous bounce Jon can’t entirely restrain.

“Are you any good at cooking?” Jon tried to joke but just a beat too long has passed, and Elias has the cooker turned right down as he crosses the room to run his hands up and down Jon’s arms, before cradling his face gently. He doesn’t kiss Jon but it feels like he might as well have. He reaches to put his hands about Elias’ waist, tugging on him until they’re pressed together.

Jon is still fresh from the shower, soft, hair hanging damp across his shoulders. He has done he best to pull twists of it back from his temples, securing them at the back of his head to leave his face free and unobscured. From the wardrobe of excessively beautiful things, he’s picked a vivid, metallic splash of a skirt that hangs in pleats past his knees, tied off at the waist with a slender sash in the same shimmering fabric. But into it he’s tucked his own tshirt, a _What The Ghost_ gift from Georgie, from his sad little bag. Something from home, something _him_ – something his. It the most he has ever blurred the lines. It is no longer a distant fantasy, always a step too far away from the real world, it is something he could step into. _Has_ stepped into.

“You look like you belong here,” Elias says softly, running his fingers wonderingly down Jon’s cheek, Jon leaning into the touch as it goes. “Like we belong here. Together.”

There is an unspoken question in there which Jon wants desperately to answer, but abruptly finds himself unable to. He thinks of the Unknowing. He resolutely does not think of the tunnels. He casts his gaze downwards, taking a step back before turning to Elias’ cupboards, looking for dishes and cutlery. Elias is silent, and the moment stretches between them.

“The plates are in the cupboard to your left,” he says finally. Jon smiles sadly where Elias can’t see, and while he retrieves the plates to place on the table Elias returns to cooking. Whatever it is he’s cooking.

“I thought you’d peek,” Jon says, sitting down carefully on a raised stool, tucking his feet up as high as he dared. He strokes the satin fabric reverently. “That you’d look to see what I was doing.”

“I am a gentleman, Jon,” Elias says, sounding deeply affronted but smiling wryly when he turns to look over his shoulder. “I would _never_ peek whilst you were…exposed.” Jon’s cheeks burn.

“Liar,” he murmurs, but supposes it all depends on semantics. He feels like he’s always exposed, with Elias, a livewire of nerves all cut and vulnerable to the air. Like his skin’s been pared back from his bones whilst Elias peers over his insides with a magnifying glass.

“You have a particularly vivid imagination tonight,” Elias remarks.

“Probably from all the statements,” Jon shoots back.

“Yes, that’s probably deserved,” Elias muses, absorbing the barb with inappropriately good humour. He turns off the cooker, apparently finished with dinner. “Nothing extravagant, I’m afraid,” he tells Jon apologetically, bringing over the pan in order to dish up. “I hope you’ll li – ”

He’s cut off as Jon, barely mindful of the pan, lurches at him abruptly, hand curling around the back of Elias’ head in order to kiss him deeply, fervently. Tears prick at Jon’s eyes, for reasons he can’t even name, and Elias must have put the pan down somewhere (somewhere safe, he hopes) to thread his fingers through Jon’s damp hair, tilting his own head to pull them even closer together.

“I love you,” Jon says all in a rush when they part, Elias’ hands still would gently into his hair, then laughs. “I love you,” he repeats, “isn’t that ridiculous? You – you lie, and you endanger me, and you hide things, you _admit_ to hiding things, important things, and yet I – ” he is cut off as Elias kisses him again, soft and sweet and hateful, in its way.

“Never hateful,” Elias tells him in a whisper against his lips. “The rest – yes. I have done terrible things, Jon, I am guilty of all you say and more. Forgive me,” he breathes out, moving to press his lips to the corner of Jon’s mouth. “Forgive me, Jon. Forgive me.” He repeats it as he brushes Jon’s hair carefully aside, presses his mouth gently to the slash marks at Jon’s throat. This part doesn’t interest Jon, not in the way films and books have always seemed to indicate it should. But it is Elias and intimacy and love, and Jon wraps his arms around Elias as best he can in silent acquiescence.

“We should eat,” Jon says, equally quiet. “It smells good.” He can’t smell anything – emotion has robbed him of all senses but the heavy weight of Elias in his grip. Elias huffs quietly, pulling away. He gives one last gently stroke of Jon’s cheek before returning to the task of serving up their dinner.

~

They sleep together. Stomachs full, hours wiled away reading pressed together on the sofa in Elias’ living room, then to bed together. So mundane, so unremarkable. They haven’t done anything so domestic since the hotel, haven’t had the moments to snatch together. Jon shuffles backward until he’s pressed against Elias’ chest, Elias’ arms wrapping around him in obliging comfort.

“Do you think we can do this?” Jon asks, and isn’t sure what he’s even asking about. The Unknowing? Where he and the world hang in the balance, Elias watching from a thousand miles away? Or does he mean the fragile glass bubble that Elias has gently tugged him into now, this almost-home that could be something, really _be_ something if allowed to grow.

“I think you can do almost anything,” Elias murmurs behind him, cold nose pressing against Jon’s neck where his hair has fallen to the side.

Jon curls over, fingers laced tightly with Elias’ where they rest over his thumping heart as he lets his eyes slide shut.

“And Jon? I love you too. More than anything.”

~

Then, the Unknowing.

Then, prison.

And nothing but nightmare after nightmare for Jon until, alone and numb from the crippling fear that is not his own, his is presented with a choice he has no idea how to make.

Until he does.

( _No going back_.)

~

Jon helped put Elias in prison. Despite _them_ , despite everything, he had done so willingly, knowing it was the right thing to do, and he doesn’t regret it. Even as after waking up he agonises over what he’d say when he visits, how he’ll explain himself, put into words the _why_ of the thing, to – what? Ask forgiveness? Understanding? Except in the end, all his worrying and strain have been for nothing. As he arrives at the prison, to be told Elias has a self-composed list of those refused visitation with him. A list consisting of just one single, solitary name.

_Jonathan Sims._

_I’m here_ , Jon thinks frantically, as forcefully as he can try and imagine how to do. _I’m here. I came. I came to see you._ But Elias doesn’t want to see him. And even if he had had a way of communicating back, something beside the one-way channel that allowed him into Jon’s mind whilst keeping his own guarded, Jon realised haplessly that he likely still wouldn’t respond. Jon had betrayed him, helped to lock him away. What had Jon expected?

Except for how the police officer disappears briefly from where he’s been talking to Jon, eventually returning with a bag containing a set of keys.

“You’re not to see him,” he reiterates, “but we had instructions to give this to you should you turn up.”

Jon stares at it, before remembering he has to actually take it.

“Why?” he asks, and the officer shrugs, looking vaguely annoyed.

“Why would I know?” he says, and Jon finds himself unable to do anything but just nod and leave. Why indeed, when Jon in all his knowledge couldn’t even begin to fathom it? Why refuse to see Jon in one moment, only to give him the keys to the flat in the next? The keys to the flat and, Jon realises as he arrives at that front door for the second time ever, access to all Elias has prepared and carefully preserved for Jon, to that shell of a life ready and waiting for him. All those pretty clothes, all that softness, all that comfort. Jon wanders the rooms again, lingers in the same doorways, runs his fingers along those same book spines. He collapses down on the bed, stone-cold from disuse, but as neatly made up as it ever was. Nothing is dusty or dirty – does Elias still have a cleaner coming? Surely not – not just on the off-chance Jon should come by?

Jon wonders if Elias is watching him even now.

He stays there for a while, hands clutched tight to his chest, staring bleakly up at the ceiling. Tries to imagine staying there, alone, in Elias’ home. No guiding hands, no support when he loses himself. Except, he’s already lost himself. Some part of himself, however big or small, died in that hospital bed so this Jon could come back, and Jon doesn’t know who is left.

“I don’t know how to do this without you,” he says to the empty room, and tries to imagine Elias there. Not in prison, watching or not, but with him. In their home. But he isn’t there, there is no answer, and Jon twists to bury his face in the sheets. _Their home_. It was a lie, even as Jon thought it. Maybe before Great Yarmouth – maybe then, yes. But now, ever since he woke up, there is one place that calls to Jon, and it lies in the bowels of the Institute. The Archivist belongs to the Archives, and if Jon knows nothing else about the person he is now, he Knows he is the Archivist.

When he returns to the wardrobe, he cannot bring himself to touch the dresses. No Elias. No point. Not entirely true, perhaps, but the truth is raw and painful to the touch and Jon will cover it with whatever he needs to in order to get through. Instead, Jon turns to Elias’ side, neat suits and shirts, pressed and orderly. Not dissimilar to what Jon is wearing himself – _better clothes_ , Basira had said, and Jon had barely refrained from laughing – button down shirt tucked into slim fitting trousers. Jon bypasses the dresses, the shirts and suits in the wardrobe, and curls his hands instead around the cold, rasping slick of Elias’ silk ties, those vibrant splashes of elegant colour that had always sat as his throat in perfect knots. Elias’ suits won’t fit even if Jon tries, but as Basira proved it is not hard to come by nice shirts and waistcoats. Especially when the institute apparently continued to pay him all through his coma.

He returns to work, and waits every day for someone to notice, someone to comment. They can’t be ignorant of it – with his humanity safely behind him, the apathy that had defined his lack of self-care and concern for his public appearance had been swept aside in favour of a return to some kind of standard for his professional attire. But then again, why would any of them care? Melanie doesn’t even believe it’s him. Basira and Martin are seemingly always otherwise occupied.

If Jon starts dressing in nicer suits, why should they care? If he wears vibrant shards of silk colour at his throat, keeping Elias’ ghost close, it is no one’s business but his. If his hair hangs long and loose and curling over his shoulders it is for no one to comment on or ask why. Even so, he waits. Jon waits, and waits, and longs to feel that sole, specific gaze on himself once more. It never comes.

Jon fills his mind with other things. There is certainly no shortage of them. The Dark’s ritual, Martin’s absence, rescuing Daisy. _Daisy_. He hadn’t expected Daisy, not the way she’s become; what _they’ve_ become together, down there entwined in the Buried. It’s not the same as what Jon had with Elias, not by a long shot, but there is a kind of recognition between Jon and Daisy. A softness that isn’t theirs by right, but that they long for all the same. They don’t talk about it as such, but it hangs between them gently when they sit in the quiet, fingers laced together, and Jon finally begins to find those edges of peace and companionship once more.

~

Until Daisy and Martin are both gone, and there’s only one of them Jon has a chance of saving.

~

He doesn’t think about the tape he and Basira found, as he chases down into the tunnel. Doesn’t think about what he’s listened to – what Elias left for him to find.

Elias.

_Elias_.

Elias is there. Waiting for him as he finally reaches the Panopticon, the centre of it all – standing beside a body Jon cannot bring himself to contemplate, and looking at Jon with such a deep, hungry longing that it drags the breath out of Jon, and Jon wants nothing more than to run to him. He’s not ready. He can’t do this. _How can he possibly do this._

_How could Elias do this to him?_

“Jon,” Elias says, voice unbearably warm and longing. “I was almost worried. You found your way alright?”

“…Yes,” Jon says, abruptly reminded that his breathlessness is not just down to seeing his – to seeing Elias after so many months. “How _did_ I find my way here?” Jon asks, looking around the old, stone structure. Continues studiously attempting to _not_ look at the not-corpse on the ground. But at last, he loses that battle, staring haplessly at the truth he had not even considered a possibility. It is a long moment and only the pointed clearing of Elias’ throat brings him back, Jon returning to staring bleakly at the man he loves. Loved.

“Suffice to say, I called you,” Elias says gently, approaching Jon like one might approach a nervous animal. Jon feels like one, heart thumping irregularly in his chest, rocking ever so slightly on the balls of his feet as even now, at the moment he had been longing for despite himself, he finds he wants to run in fear.

But he can’t. There’s more than just Elias here.

And yet the moment Elias steps into his space, he becomes all that Jon can think about.

“Oh Jon,” Elias says softly, running his hand along Jon’s cheekbone. “What happened to you?”

It takes Jon longer to jerk back than it should have.

“You don’t get to ask me that,” he replies, numbly. “No, you _don’t_. Not after you – you _run away_ , and don’t even let me visit – ” He was horrified by the tone his voice was taking. Distressed and needy and –

Elias looks no different to before he’d left. He is back in a suit, no worse for wear, nothing but closer cropped hair than before to give any indication that things were different. Jon’s falls down around his shoulders, the longest it has ever been, and more cared for than it had ever been before. Jon has imagined Elias’ hands in it, on it, hundreds of times since waking up. Elias chuckles.

“One of these days you’ll finally find it in yourself to ask me these things directly,” he said, impossibly fond. His approach is careful, the slow raising of his hand, and Jon immediately stiffens – but does not move away. Doesn’t shrug off the hand that comes to rest on his shoulder, and certainly doesn’t move away from the one that slowly, _agonisingly_ slowly threads its way into his hair.

What he does do is let out a shuddery breath, and lean in towards Elias, almost swaying. Elias pulls him in fully, and Jon’s arms come up to wrap around Elias’ middle tightly, eyes scrunched shut as he hugs Elias fiercely. He feels Elias’ free arm, the one without the hand tangled in his hair, come around his waist to return the embrace.

“I missed you,” Jon hears himself say, distantly, and god he sounds _ruined_. Elias laughs, not unkindly, and squeezes Jon even tighter. It’s _wonderful_.

“I missed you too,” Elias tells him, too truthful, too painful. “I’d say you’ve been neglecting yourself…” Elias begins, pulling back to run a hand down Jon’s chest, resting over the silk tie he wears loosened around his neck, “…but that wouldn’t be quite true, would it?” Elias’ eyes crinkle a little, like a smile. “Should I be flattered, Jon?”

_It wasn’t the same without you_ , Jon doesn’t say. _I didn’t know how else to keep you close._

“I assumed it all came with the house,” Jon snarks, sharper than he feels. “Not that I could be sure. Hard to be sure of anything with the kinds of mixed messages you were sending.”

“I did what I did to ensure things went according to plan,” Elias murmurs. “I wish it could have been different. You have no idea how much I wanted to see you, Jon.” A snort from Jon, and Elias laughs. “Alright. Perhaps you do. But it’s almost over, Jon. After all this time it’s finally coming to a close, and I promise I will tell you anything and everything you want to know.”

Jon pulls back a little further, starting at Elias with rearing incredulity and hope.

“Everything,” he repeats, and Elias smiles. But there is still something wry to the expression, and Jon has learnt a long time ago not to hope.

“There are two versions of this, Jon,” Elias says, pressing a kiss to Jon’s crown. “In both, Martin is saved. I know you would never leave him in that place. But in one version, after that, you come with me. We go home – to _our_ home. We do this together, as partners. The other…” Elias tips forward, their foreheads pressing together.

“In the other, we don’t,” Jon concludes, pushing back against Elias and squeezing his eyes together tight. He doesn’t know what Elias is planning. Even now, even with all his power and the terrible might of the Beholding behind him, he cannot see that last piece.

But he can guess.

And despite what Elias says, Jon does not think it will be a life of soft evenings inside and dinner for two. Especially, he thinks with inappropriate humour, when he doesn’t even really eat anymore. Elias laughs at Jon’s thoughts despite himself, and Jon is so, so sad as he breaks the connection in order to reach up and kiss him. All these months alone. Not even five minutes together with Elias again before _this_. Before riddles. Before bargains. Before _choices_. _It’s not enough_.

It’ll never be enough.

“I would have loved it,” Jon tells him when they finally part. “that life, the two of us together. You helped me see a version of myself I could have become, and I could have – I _would_ have _loved_ it. Loved you.” He steps back from Elias, spreads his hands wide. “But you wanted me to become more than that, and in the end, this is what you have made of me. And I cannot be both, Elias. I can’t be that person and this monster, and whilst you were _gone_ , whilst you were refusing to see me, I had to make that choice. Alone.” Jon meets Elias’ – _Jonah’s_ eyes – and refuses to understand the emotions that swirl behind them.

“I am the creature you made me into. If only it had been the creature who could have kept loving you.”

Jon turns his eyes to the space adjacent to them, fingertips stretching out to feel where the air turns cold, where the pain in his heart sharpens, and the terrible, _lonely_ consequences of his choice begin to sharpen into full realisation.

“Are you scared, Jon?” Jonah asks, voice low and intense.

“Yes,” Jon breathes out, and steps through the gap in reality before he can hear what Jonah says in return.

~

Jon thinks often on what he said to Jonah, at the end. _If only it had been the one who could keep loving you._ Jon doesn’t think there’s any version of him that doesn’t love Elias. But it wasn’t Elias, was it? It was Jonah Magnus. And Jon had never known. It doesn’t bother Jon that his powers had never _informed_ him or _told_ him that Elias was really Jonah. It breaks his heart that Jonah hadn’t told Jon himself.

Jonah isn’t there when Jon emerges, with Martin safe and Peter Lukas’ blood on his hands. In the end he decides he’s glad about that. Even though Martin told him that he’d made the decision to not kill Jonah, despite having been given ample chance and encouragement.

_Thank you_ , Jon doesn’t say, because Martin didn’t do it for him. Martin did it because he is _good_ , and that’s enough.

“We should leave London,” he says instead, looking out of the window of Martin’s new flat, a high-rise concoction steeped in the Lonely, the kind straight out of Peter’s failed ritual but with more style. “There’s too much going on at the Institute, we can’t get caught up in it.”

“Ok,” Martin agrees easily enough, but Jon can feel his gaze quizzical on his back.

_“I really loved you, you know.”_

That was what Martin had said in the Lonely. That had been enough for Jon to pull him out. Jon leans his forehead against the glass, desperately wishing he could curl in on himself and disappear. But, having just emerged, that would rather defeat the point.

“Right. We should get ready in that case.”

Martin’s voice, brisk and business-like cuts through Jon’s thoughts, jolting him from his thoughts. He turns to see Martin has stood up, his tea sat before him in the sole mug that lived in his barren cupboards, the heat sapping from it far too quickly for comfort. Martin shoots him a look, not unkind. “Is there anything you need to get from your flat?” he asks as he moves to the bedroom. “I don’t have much here, and we can always get more wherever we end up going.”

“Daisy has a safehouse in Scotland,” Jon says absently, the knowledge slipping into his mind and out his mouth without any conscious effort, “she won’t mind us using it.”

Martin nods but keeps looking at Jon, until Jon realises he hasn’t answered the question.

“No,” Jon says, shaking his head and not thinking of Jonah, returned to the flat he gave Jon, and the life Jon could have if he went back there – back to him. “No, there’s nothing for me here.”

~

After that first visit to Jonah’s house alone, after waking up, Jon hadn’t been able to bring himself to go back. He’d meant what he’d said to Jonah in more ways than one – it hadn’t been the same, wearing the beautiful things Jonah had bought for him, but neither had being in his home at all. Maybe if Jonah had invited him there sooner, maybe if he’d agreed to see Jon after Jon woke up, _maybe maybe maybe_.

Too many maybes, and none of them matter now. One night before the Unknowing, then one after he woke up _different_ and Jon just had to learn to content himself with that. If he goes back again now, Jonah will be there waiting. With open arms, Jon Knows, but that is why he knows he can’t go back. If he goes, he is lost. And besides anything, he has responsibilities, to more than just the still-aching thing between them. To Martin and to Daisy, wherever she may be. To Georgie and even Melanie, reparations for what they’ve been through because of him. Jon simply doesn’t have the luxury of being heartbroken right now.

Basira gives a distracted kind of blessing to their using Daisy’s house, too focused on finding the woman herself than being worried about whether Martin and Jon crash in one of her safehouses for a while. They take barely anything and that’s ok – it turns out Peter Lukas paid his assistant an absurdly healthy wage for a London job – and Martin hasn’t had any cause to spend it before now. They buy clothes upon arrival, discarding what they’re wearing to be washed and then shoved to the back of wardrobes, at least temporarily forgotten.

Jon buys trousers. Jeans and tshirts and shirts and he wanders around in them without worry or remark. But he thinks about Jonah’s flat, and the dresses there, and he wants. With a deep, empty ache, he _wants_.

Martin doesn’t notice anything amiss. Jon browses the laptop with its intermittent at best internet connection, until he finds something that looks promising. _He’s never done it alone_ , he thinks with a swallow, but he clicks the button anyway. After that point Jon finds it difficult to believe Martin doesn’t notice _something_ is amiss; he feels jittery all over, paces back and forth and stares at his emails and the door in turn as he waits for it to arrive. And when it _does_ arrive, he absolutely throws himself upon the package, whisking it away upstairs so quickly that even if he had been looking for it, Martin never would have gotten a glimpse.

Jon doesn’t know what he expects, trying it without Jonah. Trying without those gentle hands guiding him, without the soft touches and easy kisses that guided him along as he dressed. It’s just the slide of fabric over skin, now. It’s the slight weight of a loosely ruffled skirt hitting below his knees, the shifting of the waistline as he tries to get it to sit right.

And in the end, it does. Sit right. Jon sees himself in the mirror, long hair shoved back out of the way, and takes in a breath, eyes scanning over his body. His fingers flex, he lets out the breath, and finds the loneliness does not outweigh his pleasure.

When he comes down in the dress – not one of Jonah’s choices, but a dark, simple thing with scattered white flowers and a tiered skirt that Jon has picked for himself, he catches Martin’s eyes where he’s stood at the base of the stairs. He holds his breath, watching surprise and something else flicker over Martin’s gaze. Then Martin smiles, eyes crinkling at the edges slightly.

“You look nice,” he says simply, and that is that. He continues to the living room with his mug of tea, Jon descends the rest of the way down the stairs with a relieved looseness in his chest. Not _beautiful_ , not _wonderful_. Just – nice. Jon likes that. That’s what things are with Martin – nice. Easy. Despite dislike and distrust and distance, they have somehow fallen in together into a gentle rhythm, navigating each other with a caution that has disintegrated into quietness, but not loneliness. _Never again loneliness_ , Jon thinks to himself fiercely whenever he catches Martin’s gaze growing just that bit too distant.

Emboldened, Jon orders a couple more items – a skirt and lacy top – and then with a wry twist of his lips and a tentative click, a coat he thinks will go with them all. Martin watches the packages arrive with a little more interest this time, now that he has an idea what’s in them, but still doesn’t make any particular remarks on them. Not when Jon comes down in his new things, pads about on patterned tights that cover unshaved legs. Jon doesn’t twist his fingers in the dark, silky fabric of the skirt, doesn’t fear Martin’s judgement.

He’ll come into the sitting room, Martin will scoot over to make room for Jon to sit on the sofa, and they’ll sit together and read. It doesn’t matter if Jon’s legs are stretched neatly before him in trousers or tucked up neatly with skirts smoothed out so they fall nicely over his knees.

“Is this something you always did?” Martin asks one evening, whilst Jon is struggling not to doze off in the soft lamplight of the room. “The dresses, I mean. I never would have guessed it, back at the institute.”

The question makes Jon’s throat catch, and he wonders if Jonah can feel when Jon thinks about him. If Jonah can see the hold Jon deeply wishes he didn’t still have over him.

“No,” he manages to say instead, quietly. “It was…something very private. I was never really sure if it even had a place as part of my life. If I could ever stand to let other people see it.” _All other people but one._

Martin studies him, and Jon wonders how much he’d end up telling him, if Martin asked for more.

“I’m glad you feel like you can do it around me,” Martin says at last with a smile, and the returned curve of Jon’s lips isn’t quite a beam, but it comes close.

It is a little haven where they can, at least temporarily, hide from the fears and dread powers that wait outside, but there are still certain unavoidable allowances that must be made. And that is why Basira must send them packages filled with statements, so Jon can sate himself as best he can without preying on the nearby village for statements. Besides, how many could there possibly be amongst the villagers? It would hardly last him long in any case.

Unlike Jonah, so eager and pleased to pull Jon close as he read statements, Martin excuses himself from the cottage entirely, and the contrast brings a wry, sad smile to Jon’s face. He doesn’t want to miss Jonah, in times like this. But he still does, and he doesn’t know how to get around that. Better to just get it over and done with, and to bury the longing under mundanities and distance.

Jon’s voice is steady and careless as he pulls out a statement, glancing idly to the tape recorder already running.

“Statement of Hazel Rutter, regarding a fire in her childhood home. Original statement given August 9th, 1992. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. Statement begins.”

There is a rustle of paper, a crackle in Jon’s ears.

_“Hello, Jon.”_

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this hurt to read, because it sure hurt to write. <3


End file.
